Mission creep creeps again
Hmm.
If people are “at risk of depression and suicide” because of pronouns then their problems go way deeper than pronouns.
Also what does this have to do with genetic testing?
Tip Jar
Hmm.
If people are “at risk of depression and suicide” because of pronouns then their problems go way deeper than pronouns.
Also what does this have to do with genetic testing?
“Science shows expressing skepticism about anorexics’ claims of healthy or excess weight contribute to their obesity.” This is fun!
Supposedly science was cancelled, but maybe just hijacked. “Science shows”, “experts say”, “polls suggest”, etc. are all vague rhetorical devices. What science? Who are the scientists? How did they show it? :P
Does science show anything about the effects on systolic blood pressure of having to remember pronouns?
Maybe 23and Me, could identify the gene or genes that code for Trans. It would see an awful lot of debate, against and mistaken identity. And be, you know, science.
I suppose 280 characters aren’t really enough, but I did read the article, and it contains the same hollow claims. No actual science is cited or referenced.
https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/trust-the-science-by-supporting-trans-health-care/
Ah yes – I thought I knew who had composed the tweet and sure enough. That’s “Jey” (formerly Jennifer aka Jen) McCreight, who used to blog at FTB. “They” recently “came out” as trans.
Science has also shown that insisting on “correct” pronouns induces normal people not to give a shit about trans “folx”.
Poor jen/Jey. They always came across as very fragile and did not enjoy (as for any sane person), the sexist and misogynistic abuse and attention they got. I do wonder how much of the trend of young women transitioning is just another form of running away from men and a shite society.
I did see a link on from Jey’s account to a presentation they had done that was touted as being a great explanation of the science supporting trans. It was, of course, nothing of the sort, despite holding out their qualifications as a challenge to JKR. The only slide that was actually even a little science claimed that sex is not a binary because intersex people exist – at a rate of 1:1500 births. nothing to do with trans and not exactly overwhelming evidence for a lack of binary status.
What did we do before the words “ze, hir, xe, xem” etc. existed? Were “trans” people dying like flies? Have these new inventions been as helpful for “trans” people as the invention of synthetic insulin was for diabetic people?
I have come to really loath the argument that sex doesn’t really exist because of intersex people. The word ‘intersex’ is false. Genetic testing has shown that there is no such thing, which is why the people once labelled ‘intersex’ are now said to have disorders of sexual development, or DSDs. The simple fact of the matter is that all humans are either male or female, and some have DSDs but are still either male or female. Basically, if you have a Y chromosome you are male, and if you don’t have a Y chromosome, you are female; apart from a very few (sterile) people. DSDs simply don’t have anything whatsoever to do with ‘trans’, and have as much explanatory power as do genuine disabilities in regard to those people who want to be perceived as disabled; none.
Here is an interesting example of a paper on exchange of genes between X and Y chromosomes in humans, of the kind that people who claim to be the opposite sex like to use to confuse everyone else, by implying that sex isn’t immutable.
What I find weird is that the very same people who claim that the existence of DSDs mean that humans can be ‘mixed sex’ so a normal male or female can ‘really’ be the opposite sex, are utterly appalled at the suggestion that, since mixed race people actually exist, a white person can ‘really’ be a black one.
Oh, and since 23andMe claims
I shall use correct pronouns for all of them, and not the weird ones they tell me I should use.
I wonder if anyone has tried to argue that transwomen are valid, because males have X chromosomes, but transmen are just bitches faking it, because females don’t have X chromosomes.
If any company should be able to determine the correct pronouns for its customers, it’s a genetic testing company.
tigger_the_wing #10
Of course by that very same logic one could argue that gender doesn’t really exist because of “non-binary” or “gender-nonconforming” people. But obviously that’s totally different because *cough!* *mumble* *mumble* *cough!* *mumble* *mumble* *mumble* *cough!* *cough!*
Q.E.D.!
Checkmate TERFs!
And once again, notice the infinite double standard: If not every single individual ever born fits neatly into either the “biological male” or “biological female” box (as you would expect when talking about physical reality rather than pure mathematics and idealized platonic forms), then sex is either unreal or at least so fuzzy that it’s impossible to say anything in particular about the sex of even the most clear-cut example of a biological male ever observed. But if the supposed “gender” differences they’re talking about are so vacuous and ill-defined that it’s impossible to even specify what the criteria for belonging to a specific gender are, let alone demonstrate that they apply to anyone at all, that apparently makes them more firmly established than the laws of thermodynamics. As always it’s Calvinball all the way down, and the rules are whatever they have to be to get to the fixed, pre-determined conclusion.
There is also what I have come to think of as the “Gender of the Gaps” fallacy because it’s so closely analogous to the way theists claim victory by default for the God hypothesis unless atheists can meet a standard of certainty and completeness that they are even less capable of meeting themselves. Even if there were no basis for talking about biological sexes as distinct and identifiable categories it still wouldn’t imply that their idea of “gender” is real or that being a “man”/”woman” is about something other than biological sex. What it would imply is that there’s not basis for talking about “men” or “women” either. If biological sexes are not valid categories, then neither are “man” and “woman”. If biological sex doesn’t make us “men” or “women”, then nothing does.
Presumably Jey knows which parent contributes the mitochondrial DNA to the next generation.
Here’s a bucket of science for ye:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4032517/
(And as others have pointed out, if scientist did indeed manage to identify specific genetic or neurological markers that were reliably and unambiguously linked to trans identity, what are the chances that TAs would accept this as evidence that TIMs who lacked such features were simply wrong to identify as women?)
Looks like I’ll be using Ancestry, then.
This suggests a natural experiment: compare the experiences of trans people in countries like the US, most of Europe and the Americas, etc., where the predominant languages have sex-based gendered pronouns vs. those in countries like China, Japan, Turkey, and Iran where they don’t, and see where their quality of life is better.
I used 23andMe (doctor’s recommendation). I expect any day now to be told what “my” pronouns are.
@tigger_the_wing #10
Your link is broken. Also, what if some of one’s cells have a Y chromosome and some of them don’t?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46,XX/46,XY
A common religious “argument” is of the form, “Not Darwin, therefore Jesus.” The pious seem to feel that they can skip over the bits where they have to show that god or gods exist, and that it’s actually their god wot did it, when all “Not Darwin” would show is that it’s not Darwin. It offers no proof of any other explanation.
Similarly, even if genderists were to prove that sex is a “spectrum”, it fails to prove that humans can actually change sex. Clownfish and barramundi offer no support either. Not even a sex-changing mammal would show that humans can change sex. There are mammals that fly, and mammals that dive to thousands of meters, yet humans can do neither. Airplanes and submarines are complicated, expensive, cumbersome mechanical fixes that allow humans to partake in actions that come to other mammals as naturally as breathing or walking.
Trans activists have only superficial analogies to get their point across. “Transwomen are women just like Black women and disabled women are! It’s right there in the word!” “Clown fish!” “Intersex!” “Lipstick!” “Head tilt!” If they had better arguments, they would use them. Genderists seem to see any of their “proofs” or “evidence” as the first domino in a chain, leading to “victory.” In fact, each is only one bit of isolated, useless information, going nowhere, proving nothing. It’s telling that their fallback position is not a better argument, or real information, but projection-based, hyperbolic smears and threats. “You’re denying my humanity!” “Suicide!” “You want us all dead!”
Ultimately it comes down to argument by redefinition. If people are whatever gender they feel like, and woman is defined as a gender rather than a sex, well, then by definition anyone who feels like a woman is a woman. And since there’s no way to know what another person feels like, then you can’t question anyone’s identity.
I’ve long been bothered by the conflation of “gender” with sex, initially because of my linguistics training where I was taught that sex is a real-world category, while gender is a grammatical distinction that in a few languages partially overlaps with sex. And for the most part English doesn’t have gender–our third person singular pronouns designate sex (with the occasional exception, such as when people refer to boats or cars or nations as “she”). So it annoyed me back around the nineties when “gender” started to be used as a synonym for “sex” in general language*, but I had no idea at the time of just how pernicious this conflation would become.
*Which differs from the feminist use of “gender” to describe all the extra baggage that gets attached to the sexes.
Colin Day, oops! Sorry –
[link fixed]
Bjarte Foshaug, indeed.
That’s why they are constantly declaring reasonable people personæ non grata – they don’t want anyone in the cult to hear or read any objections, because they might start to think.
YNnB? #20
Exactly, it’s roughly analogous to saying “I am entitled to get for free what you have to pay for”.
Indeed, and as you have correctly pointed out several times already, if they had any real examples of feminists stirring up “hate” against trans people, denying their “rights”, advocating “violence” etc. they would use it for everything it was worth. It should be a huge red flag to anyone when an ideological pressure group keeps making such outrageous accusations without providing any specifics apart from the words that they themselves put into the mouths of their opponents (like the corrupt cops often portrayed in gangster movies who plant drugs or weapons on an innocent person just to give themselves an excuse to have him/her arrested).
Funnily, when I got into feminism in the aftermath of “Elevatorgate” and the ensuing Anti Harassment Policy Wars, the women who were targeted by MRAs (including Ophelia) never had any problem with providing endless concrete examples of obvious hatespeech, bullying, and threats. Not that any more examples were needed. One of my most vivid memories from that time was watching Caroline Criado-Perez’ mentionings on twitter fill up with the ugliest cyberbullying I had ever seen, including the obligatory rape and death threats, faster than the twitter feed could load them. I would click “refresh”, and by the time the tweets were finished loading there were 15 new ones waiting in line. These attacks could go on for hours at a time, everyday for months or even years.
When my twitter feed started filling up with horror stories about the diabolical TERFs (supposedly at least as bad as the MRAs going after CCP), it was a very different story indeed. No direct quotes, or screencaps, or retweets of the alleged “TERF’s” actual
words, only the TA’s own account of what her words supposedly implied as seen through the distorting lens of a Million unquestioned assumptions and ideological dogma, and only at the other end of a long train of impossibly sloppy inferences, extrapolations, mindreading etc.. In fact the only actual examples of hateful and violent rhetoric seemed to come from their own side. It wasn’t long before I realized that the diabolical “TERFs” they were talking about included at least half of the feminists I was following. That’s when I realized that this was a pseudo social rights movement with more in common with “incels” than feminists or anti-racists.
It didn’t have to be that way. There could have been a legitimate movement for people genuinely suffering from
gendersex dysphoria, indeed there should have been, but that’s not the trans rights movement we have now. Feminists didn’t cause me to think this, TAs did. If this were about fighting real transphobia, then at least to an excellent first approximation 0% of their time and effort would be spent fighting feminists while 100% would be spent fighting toxic masculinity. Instead as good as 100% of their time and effort is spent fighting feminists, and rather than fighting toxic masculinity, they are actively engaging in it.[…] a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Mission creep creeps […]
J. McCreight herself (at the time) was one of the women who was subjected to many of the threats, especially after suggesting something as innocuous as “Atheism +.”
The “Intersex, therefore Sex isn’t a binary, therefore trans” line of reasoning reminds me of a very bad Creationist argument I vaguely recall running across many years ago.
“Define a species.”
“You can’t, because there are gray areas and exceptions.”
“So ‘species’ isn’t a clear cut scientific category.”
“This presents a severe problem for the Theory of Evolution.”
“Creationism doesn’t have that problem.”
“Creationism wins.”
If I did not actually hear that argument, it’s still a fair analogy. It’s Bjarte’s point in #14: if the boundaries of a category are fuzzy, it’s impossible to use it on any example, for it’s become meaningless.
@Sastra,
Applying that sort of “logic” to linguistics would bring the whole house of cards down, because there’s no way you can define “a language” without gray areas and exceptions.
I suspect that’s true for a lot of fields of study.
#16 Bjarte
Before I was banned on Twitter I asked a couple of TIMs about the claim that TIMs have “female brains” based on a study of brain scans (the results of the study were described as speculative and unconfirmed by the researchers). The few guys who replied informed me that they would still be woman even if their brain scan came up as what the researchers proposed was typical of “Male brain”
So my guess is that there is no biological test they would accept for themselves if it did not give them the result they wanted.
“Science shows that giving in to their every grotesque demand can impact deluded people’s health by significantly reducing their risk of depression”
Why yes, I worked with someone who would have been much happier if she had just been handed the manager’s position on a plate and been allowed to lord it over everyone while doing zero work. The workplace would have gone to shit, but what’s that next to the narcissist’s fragile ego?
There was a magazine cartoon long ago in which a man was ranting on top of a therapist couch while two therapists cowered beneath it. One therapist said to the other, “But if I tell him he’s NOT God, he’ll go back to having an inferiority complex!” Seems to fit a lot of situations these days.
Ha! It certainly does.
McCreight blogged at 23andMe:
That saddens me very deeply. In this paragraph, I’m calling her Jen to remember, I talked with Jen very briefly at one of the Women in Secularism conferences. She was eating a burrito in the lobby. I apologized for interrupting her eating so I could say something positive. I made a point to say her last name, so she would know that I knew how to pronounce it (McCreight rhymes with write). I don’t remember anything else I said, or anything she said, but it was one of those moments where I decided that saying anything was better than saying nothing. She was getting an insane level of abuse at the time. RationalWiki has a sample on their page for Jey McCreight under the heading “Attack by Roosh”.
But in my quote above by Jey — about “the support and science to not go through the wrong puberty” — that seems like a fantasy. Suppose their adolescent female body was given a puberty blocker plus testosterone to go through the “right puberty” (if that’s what Jey means). I don’t see that as science. I see it as a technology enabling an ideology that includes fantasies like The Allure of Body Dissociation.
Jey may feel brave to write that blog post. But corporations know what they’re doing to create and control the messaging.